Talking "Top Gear" with Tanner Foust

What to Expect in Season 3

Tanner Foust is a busy guy. Between competing in the European Rallycross championship, training for special events like the Hot Wheels Double Loop Dare, and stunt driving on the silver screen in movies like "The Bourne Legacy," Foust partners with Adam Ferrara and Rutledge Wood to shoot the American version of "Top Gear. " With season three just around the corner, we caught up with Foust to talk "Top Gear."

What can we expect to see in season three?

We're doing an epic journey through Moab and Monument Valley -- that is one of my favorite parts of the country. It's just absolutely an epic place. Last week we did something I've never done before: I drove a 40,000-pound tractor and did races and donuts and all the things you would in a rental car in tractors. Speaking of rental cars, one of the challenges we're doing this year also involves [rentals]. As a race car driver, I spend a lot of time going city to city and we all have our inside info on what rental car we like the best as racers...so we did something called the Rental Car Olympics, and in one of the shows we get to live that out a little bit.

Any hints on what challenges or power tests will be featured in the next season?

We did a show where the three of us…explored the new police cars that are out… and also I got the chance to do a power test on a new Corvette Z06 that is used as a police car in one department. It was a drug seizure, and they just slapped some lights on it, but they actually use it to pull people over in it and everything. So I chased down a sport bike, which is supposed to be the ultimate getaway vehicle, and we did this insane shoot in Long Beach. We did 155 mph over the bridge in Long Beach to the terminal, and drifted through the piers, drifted on the on ramps. I mean, it was just freaking epic.

What role do you, Rutledge, and Adam play in coming up with challenges and segment ideas?

A lot of the initial sparks do come from our boyish dreams, I guess, then clearly over the last three years…a number of them have been adaptations of ideas the U.K. show had fun with, and then there's the third component, of course, is just the producers…[wanting] to get back at us, and they just decide we're going to go camp in the 120-degree desert for five days and eat bugs.

What's the most fun you've had in a "Top Gear" challenge so far?

The Corvette chasing the bike was awesome; this particular motorcycle rider was a drifting bike guy, and so we did tandem drifting, on onramps onto the highway. …One of the first shoots that we did was the Evo down the ski mountain. That was a dream that I've always wanted to do, drive a car down a ski hill and it visually looked really cool, but it was impossible to express really how fun that was for me. That was just an awesome day.

What's the least fun you've had?

Sleeping in the cars in the moonshine shoot. We actually had to go ahead and let ourselves get so drunk that they had to turn the cameras off. It was a conscious decision. The three of us banded together and were like, 'Look, they've had these cameras on us for like 22 hours and I don't think they're stopping. Let's just get too drunk for TV.'

Any chance of doing an episode with James May, Jeremy Clarkson, and Richard Hammond of the original "Top Gear" like the guys at "Top Gear Australia" did?

I saw what they did to the "Top Gear Australia" guys [laughs]. I think it would be great. I mean, we had a lot of fun with Hammond over [in the U.K.], and I know that there's some tweeting that goes on back and forth between Rutledge and Richard, and he spends quite a bit of time in the U.S. now shooting a couple American shows, so it would be fun if one or all of them get involved. But we would definitely have to make sure that we didn't get locked up in any jails or anything.

What's your favorite car on sale today?

My favorite car changes a little bit with the wind. I'd say one that somehow doesn't make my top lists sometimes but I always kick myself if I don't include it is the Carrera GT Porsche. It's one of the few true supercars I've ever driven that feels like you've owned it for five years as soon as you drive it for the first time. I'd probably put the [911] GT3 RS also on the list. The Ferrari 458 is a car that is so surprising really. You can't help but just keep looking closer and closer at it to find the gimmick, or some problem behind the numbers, some issue someplace where the carbon fiber doesn't line up perfectly, you know? And it's just one of those cars the closer you get the harder you drive, the better it gets.

And an off-topic bonus about the Nurburgring:

I've had a couple opportunities to go out there - one of my favorite places on the planet. The last time I went out there I got ahold of one of Ford's Raptors -- it's like the only one in Germany -- and took that on the Nurburgring and that got quite a reaction. It was Good Friday so it was a big, huge day at the Nurburgring, so it's all Zondas and crazy Porsches everywhere and my goal was to pass a Porsche and I did it. I think I set a time of about 9:48. I was happy to get under 10 minutes, that was the goal. And it still had the 100-mph speed limiter on it and everything. It was hilarious, that thing -- it was like howling its way into the carousel and stuff.